SARAJEVO (Reuters) – A senior Bosnian judge has been arrested on suspicion of taking a bribe, the prosecutor’s office said on Thursday, in the first case of corruption to involve a member of the judiciary in the Balkan country.

Appeals judge, Azra Miletic, was arrested late on Wednesday and two other people, whose sentences for organized crime and drug-dealing had been greatly reduced on appeal, were arrested on the same grounds. One was a former police officer.

The court declined Reuters request for a comment from Miletic.

Bosnia is under pressure from the European Union, which it wants to join, to strengthen its judicial system and crack down on the organized crime and corruption that has flourished in the almost 20 years since the country’s 1992-95 war.

Fierce civil unrest in February last year was spurred by popular anger against the political elite, which is perceived as corrupt and getting rich while the country trails its former Yugoslav peers on the road to EU membership.

The president of the state court, Meddzida Kreso, said it was vital that the arrest did not destroy the credibility of a court that deals with cases of war crimes and organized crime, and has repeatedly been the target of political criticism.

“It is my responsibility to protect the integrity of this institution in this difficult moment as well as all judges whose work will probably now come under special public scrutiny,” she told a news conference.

“This case is an expression of our determination for a general fight against crime and corruption,” Kreso said. “Our work till now must not be brought into question.”

Miletic’s lawyer, Vasvija Vidovic, told the Sarajevo Klix news website, that “Miletic was the best judge in Bosnia and the most honest person among judges, as far as I know. That’s why I decided to defend her.”

SARAJEVO (Reuters) – Bosnia’s lawmakers endorsed on Monday a commitment to reform its economy and address political divisions, potentially unblocking a stalled bid to join the European Union in a step the bloc’s top diplomat called “historic”.

The declaration is a condition of the EU finally endorsing a pre-accession pact with Bosnia, originally signed in 2008, under a new initiative led by Germany and Britain to shake the country out of years of stagnation.

“Today’s endorsement of the written commitment in this parliament enables Bosnia-Herzegovina to finally take a step towards joining the European Union,” EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said in a speech to lawmakers.

“This could be a historic turning point for all of us – not only here in Sarajevo but for all Europe.”

Bosnia lags behind its ex-Yugoslav peers on the long road to joining the wealthier 28-nation EU, having struggled to shake ethnic divisions that still languish almost 20 years since the end of a 1992-95 war in which some 100,000 people died.

Spurred by fierce civil unrest last February, the EU late last year endorsed the Anglo-German plan to release funds for Bosnia and endorse a long-delayed Stabilisation and Association Agreement in the hope of spurring economic and eventually more thorny political reforms.

The initiative required leaders of Bosnia’s Muslim Bosniaks, Catholic Croats and Orthodox Serbs to make a written commitment to institutional reform of their highly-decentralised state and agree an agenda for broader political and economic changes.

But it took nearly a month for Bosnia’s rival leaders to sign a document drafted by the country’s tripartite presidency. The process was held up by Bosnian Serb President Milorad Dodik, who has sought closer ties with Russia and is less enthusiastic about Bosnia joining the EU.

Dodik insisted on including specifics of the country’s multi-layered governance in the text and finally signed the declaration last week, paving the way for parliament to endorse the plan.

Deputies from his SNSD party did not attend the session on Monday, leaving the upper house of parliament without a quorum and spoiling plans for Mogherini to address both houses. They boycotted after a request to discuss accusations against the speaker of parliament was rejected.

Mogherini made no reference to their absence.

(Writing by Daria Sito-Sucic; Editing by Matt Robinson and John Stonestreet)

TUZLA, Bosnia (Reuters) – Bosnia was still digging up the bones of its own when those of others began arriving in boxes from the tsunami-struck shores of Southeast Asia a decade ago.

It coincided with Kathryne Bomberger’s rise to head of the Bosnian-based International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), created in 1996 on the initiative of Bill Clinton to unearth the secrets of gruesome death pits strewn across the Bosnian countryside following its 1992-95 war.

The ICMP sent a handful of staff to Thailand to set up a laboratory to collect blood samples from relatives of some of the 230,000 people who perished when a giant wave struck in December 2004, matching them with DNA from bone samples of the victims sent to Bosnia. It helped identify some 800.

“That was really a huge learning experience for us,” Bomberger told Reuters in an interview.

A decade later, what started as an ad hoc body devoted to the former Yugoslavia has become the world’s leading authority on missing people, a status enshrined last month in a treaty signed by five European governments – Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Sweden – that will see the organization move its headquarters this year from Sarajevo to The Hague and become a permanent global body.

The move is recognition of the ICMP’s success not just in the ex-Yugoslavia, but in Thailand, the Philippines, Chile, South Africa, the United States, Iraq, Libya, Colombia and others, where its unique DNA-identification techniques have helped identify victims of natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina, of political repression, drug crime, apartheid and war.

Mexico is next, Bomberger says, while Syria – with tens of thousands missing – represents a looming challenge. The ICMP says it has proposed working with Syrian refugees to collect data on missing relatives, and has met with opposition figures.

“Rarely in life can you change the world, and I think this treaty is something that does change the world,” Bomberger said, adding that other states were expected to sign up.

“CAN’T DO IT ALONE”

An American, Bomberger joined the ICMP two years after its creation, since when it has helped identify 70 percent of 40,000 missing people from the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, including many of the more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys killed when the U.N. ‘safe haven’ of Srebrenica fell to Bosnian Serb forces in 1995.

Mass graves are still being unearthed in Bosnia, but the ICMP has effectively outgrown the former Yugoslav republic, a success-story hard to match in a country otherwise still coming to terms with the war’s legacy, deeply divided and dysfunctional. Most of ICMP’s 140 staff are Bosnians.

The ICMP owes its success to the DNA identification process it developed to tackle Srebrenica, where most victims were found in secondary graves, dug up from the pits they were first tossed into and moved to others in an attempt to conceal the crime, scattering remains, belongings and evidence.

“It was absolutely impossible to identify these mortal remains through any other means,” said Bomberger. DNA analysis has yielded the names of 98 percent of 6,900 Srebrenica victims identified so far.

Crucially, the organization lobbied for and helped craft a legal framework and institutions in Bosnia to deal with an issue that frequently becomes politicized in the aftermath of war or the fall of a regime, left to the efforts of civil society and human rights groups to press a state into action.

“We look at DNA technology, but that technology does not work until a state makes a decision to search for persons missing regardless of their ethnic, religious or national origin, in a non-discriminatory fashion,” Bomberger said.

Nura Beganovic is still searching for her only brother believed killed in Srebrenica.

“It means a lot to us when there is such an international organization capable of helping us. We can’t do it alone,” she said adding that she was worried the ICMP’s move might affect efforts to find the last of Bosnia’s dead.

Evidence collected at the ICMP’s identification center in the city of Tuzla, housed in a sport center, has been used in hundreds of criminal cases since the war.

Staff in masks work in sterile, white rooms, divided by glass walls. Blood and bone samples are stored in huge refrigerators, and data collected from every case the ICMP has ever handled is stored in a vast and growing online database.

Hajra Catic is a frequent visitor, searching for the remains of her son.

“I can’t sleep at night, hoping I’ll be able to identify him,” said Catic, who lost her husband and 20 other relatives in Srebrenica, the worst massacre on European soil since the World War Two. “I wish just to have a little finger of his, so I can bury him.”

SARAJEVO, Dec 12 (Reuters) – The International Monetary Fund
will be ready to discuss a new loan arrangement for Bosnia and
cancel its current, but now suspended, deal early in 2015 if a
new government is formed, a senior IMF official told Reuters on
Friday.

The Fund has yet to disburse its latest tranche of aid for
Bosnia after the government said it could not comply with the
deal terms due to a general election being called in October.

“It seems logical that if you have a new government, you
have a new period ahead and a new commitment to move ahead with
economic reforms, to frame that in a new IMF programme,” Ron van
Rooden, the head of a visiting IMF mission, said in an
interview.

The lender arrived in Bosnia to review the implementation of
economic policies under the 33-month aid programme worth around
630 million euros ($786 million) agreed in 2012.

The current programme has already been increased twice and
extended for nine months and is due to end next June.

But van Rooden said the lender could still not conclude its
eighth review and release the latest tranche of aid because the
government has not made enough progress in meeting the terms for
the disbursement of 70 million euros.

Bosnia has yet to form a new, multi-layered government after
the vote and adopt budgets for 2015.

Van Rooden said the IMF could accept temporary financing
decisions, if there was enough progress on other terms, and
release the funds at the end of January.

But he also said the current loan deal could be cancelled
and folded into a new deal, along with some of the outstanding
commitments of the existing programme, early next year, when the
new government is expected to be in place.

The IMF wants the government to cut spending, improve tax
compliance and fight tax fraud, and demonstrate efforts to
strengthen financial sector stability and enhance its
supervision of banks.

Van Rooden said the European Union and the World Bank have
strongly supported a new IMF loan arrangement for Bosnia which
would also provide a new framework for their assistance to the
Balkan country.

“What we got so far were positive signals from the political
leaders to continue the relationship with the IMF,” van Rooden
said.

He said the Bosnian economy had proven resilient to the
impact of huge floods in May, with industrial production,
exports and tax revenues picking up. The IMF is forecasting
economic growth of 2.8 percent next year and close to 1 percent
this year, van Rooden said.

SARAJEVO (Reuters) – A political bloc in Bosnia edged towards a new national government on Tuesday committed to a raft of reforms backed by the European Union in an effort to unblock the country’s stalled bid to join the bloc.

A national government has yet to be formed since an October election, but the inaugural session of the new lower house of parliament on Tuesday saw the emergence of a majority seen as backing a German-British initiative to spur economic reform and unlock EU funds.

Significantly, the largest ethnic Serb party of Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik was left heading for the opposition benches for the first time in nearly a decade, as lawmakers elected a speaker and his deputies. The party, which says it would rather see Bosnia dissolve, has for years been accused of blocking reforms at the national level.

“I want this parliament composition to make a major contribution to the stabilization of the political scene in Bosnia, to unblock the process of integration so as to boost economic development and employment,” said speaker Sefik Dzaferovic, elected from the ranks of Bosnia’s largest party representing the Muslim Bosniak community — the SDA.

Dzaferovic’s election indicated a government deal was near, based on a reform program agreed between the SDA, the moderate Democratic Front and a bloc of smaller Bosnian Serb parties. The HDZ party, the largest representing the Bosnian Croats, also indicated it would support the government, isolating Dodik.

Bosnia’s complex political system is a legacy of its 1992-95 war, ended by a U.S.-brokered peace deal that split power along ethnic lines.

The unwieldy system has slowed reform, stifled economic development and left Bosnia trailing its ex-Yugoslav peers on the road to membership of the EU.

The German-British plan seeks to use the October elections as an opportunity to regain momentum by dangling the carrot of EU cash and putting economics before political reform.

Dzaferovic said the government may be formed in January, and that the SDA would supply the prime minister. It could yet become bogged down in political wrangling over the formation of governments at other layers of Bosnia’s power system.

SARAJEVO (Reuters) – The European Union urged Russia on Friday not to drag the Western Balkans into its deepening rift with the West over Ukraine, reflecting concern that the region risks becoming another point of East-West tension.

The countries of the Western Balkans have their sights set on membership of the EU, but diplomats say Russia is exploiting economic hard times and pro-Russian sentiment among some Orthodox Christian Slavs to build influence in the region.

Noting “tensions” between the EU and Russia, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, on a visit to Bosnia, said it was in the interest of both “to find and develop ways of cooperation, and not of confrontation”.

“For sure, it would be a good idea to keep the Western Balkans out of these dynamics and thinking, and I would expect everybody in the Russian leadership to consider this in the same way,” she told a news conference.

Germany, in particular, has made clear its concern over Russia’s role in the Balkans, which remains politically and economically fragile two decades after the bloody breakup of socialist Yugoslavia.

While Slovenia and Croatia have both joined the EU, expansion to the likes of Serbia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Albania and Kosovo has been slowed by foot-dragging on reform and deep unease within the EU itself over the wisdom of further enlargement.

Western diplomats are particularly concerned at signs of creeping Russian influence in Serbia and among ethnic Serbs in Bosnia, who share Russians’ Orthodox Christian faith.

SARAJEVO (Reuters) – Bosnia’s new presidential triumvirate took office on Monday in a first step to forming a government the West hopes will press economic reforms to help unblock stalled efforts to join the European Union.

The presidency comprises a Serb, a Croat and a Bosniak, part of an unwieldy system of ethnic power-sharing laid down in a U.S.-brokered peace deal that ended Bosnia’s 1992-95 war.

The presidency is largely ceremonial, but proposes a prime minister to lead the central government spanning Bosnia’s two autonomous regions – the Federation of mainly Catholic Croats and Muslim Bosniaks, and the mainly Orthodox Serb Republic.

Nationalists on all three sides – deeply divided over the future of their joint state – won the most votes in an Oct. 12 general election, but must negotiate with more moderate parties to form stable governments at the state and regional levels.

That process took 16 months after the previous general election in 2010.

Britain and Germany hope to recruit the next central government into a new diplomatic initiative to unblock Bosnia’s stalled bid to join the European Union, by freeing up funds in exchange for a commitment to broad reforms.

Bosnia’s system of power sharing, and its high degree of decentralization, has left the country hostage to ethnic bickering, blocking political and economic reform.

London and Berlin hope to win the backing of the 28-nation EU for their plan.

“I expect the presidency in the next four years to be a strong engine that will pull the country forward on its reform path to our most important goal,” Bakir Izetbegovic, who was re-elected as the Bosniak representative on the presidency, said in reference to EU accession.

His Croat colleague, Dragan Covic, said: “No matter how different are our views of Bosnia and its future, we can reach joint solutions in foreign and domestic policy only through mutual trust.”

Izetbegovic’s SDA party, Bosnia’s largest, and Covic’s HDZ, the biggest party among Croats, have agreed a government deal in the autonomous Federation, but are at odds over which Serb party to share power with at the state level.

While the Bosniaks want a strong, more centralized Bosnia, the HDZ campaigned on creating a third, separate Croat entity.

SARAJEVO (Reuters) – The European Union needs to spell out much more clearly economic and political reforms required from Bosnia’s leaders in exchange for helping to accelerate its accession bid and unlocking funds for the Balkan country, a think-tank said on Friday.

In a report entitled “Retreat for Progress in Bosnia”, the Democratisation Policy Council (DPC) criticized a British-German plan for Bosnia unveiled in Berlin last week as too “modest” and as failing to set adequate reform incentives.

Britain’s ambassador to Bosnia, Edward Ferguson, told Reuters the initiative, which aims to reboot ethnically divided Bosnia’s stalled EU bid, would be on the agenda of EU foreign ministers at a meeting on Monday.

“What we want to do as quickly as possible is to turn this from the UK-German initiative into a new EU strategy that is signed up to by all members of the EU,” said Ferguson.

But the DPC, which promotes democracy and accountability worldwide and is funded by a U.S. private foundation, said the plan fell far short of what was needed in Bosnia, where an unwieldy system of ethnic power-sharing put in place after the Yugoslav wars of 1992-95 has stymied reforms.

“The elephant in the room remains – a political structure that includes zero incentives for reforms or accountability to citizens, and allows for fear and patronage to be the dominant drivers of social and political life,” the report said.

“(The EU should) set the initial reform agenda instead of allowing political leaders to do it according to their own interests,” DPC said in its recommendations.

“If the aim is to get Bosnia prepared for membership, the EU cannot afford to be coy or modest in its demands,” it said, urging “consequences” for those who question Bosnia’s integrity as a nation state – a clear rebuke to Bosnian Serb leaders who often threaten to secede from the loose federation.

In their initiative, Germany and Britain hope to inject momentum into Bosnia’s EU bid by dangling the carrot of EU cash and putting economics ahead of political reform.

With Bosnia’s fragile economy reliant on International Monetary Fund handouts to cover a growing budget deficit, Britain and Germany hope the attraction of access to EU funds can help push institutional change.

Nationalist parties triumphed in elections in October and the complex political system has hampered the formation of a stable government, dimming hopes of swift progress with the EU.

SARAJEVO (Reuters) – Nationalists with opposing views of Bosnia’s future secured the most votes in this month’s general election, but none will be able to rule alone, raising the prospect of lengthy power-sharing talks and new delays in long-overdue reforms.

More lost time could further destabilize Bosnia’s fragile economy, which slowed further this year after devastating floods in May and badly needs fresh money from the International Monetary Fund to cover its growing budget gaps.

The election commission confirmed on Monday that SNSD party of Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik, the SDA of Bosniak leader Bakir Izetbegovic and the Croat HDZ have won the most votes for the national, regional and local representatives in the ethnically divided country.

But Bosnia’s complex political system, based on ethnic and regional quotas, means they cannot form governments alone or band together to form a stable national government. Each needs support from more moderate parties, which have yet to decide whether to join forces with any of them or remain in opposition.

Analysts said there was little chance for a stable government that would move the Balkan country towards the European Union and revive its economy.

Dodik narrowly won the race for president of the autonomous Serb Republic on repeated calls for its secession from Bosnia. Izetbegovic had advocated a strong, unified state, and HDZ leader Dragan Covic has called for the creation of a Croat entity within Bosnia.

Now they pledge to move forward with reforms they had blocked for years.

“Theoretically, they could” form new governments, said Kurt Bassuener, senior associate at the Democratization Policy Council, a think-tank. “But I see no evidence in the past behavior or judging by their interests that they would initiate meaningful reform.”

The three nationalist blocks have largely dominated governments in Bosnia for the past eight years, dragging the country backwards, halting reforms and creating huge networks of political patronage using public-sector jobs.

The Dayton peace accords, which ended Bosnia’s 1992-95 war and divided the country into two autonomous regions, created an unwieldy system of ethnic power-sharing that has proven ineffective in peace, leaving Bosnia at the bottom of the Western Balkan hopefuls to join the European Union.

SARAJEVO (Reuters) – Nationalists deeply divided over the future of Bosnia have extended their rule over the Balkan country, offering scant hope of genuine change to a political system designed to end a war but seen as ineffective in peace.

With a majority of votes from Sunday’s elections for national, regional and local representatives, the main nationalist parties from the Bosniak, Serb and Croat communities looked to have held on to power.

They include the SNSD of Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik, who advocates Bosnia’s dissolution; the SDA of Bosniak leader Bakir Izetbegovic who wants a strong, unified state; and the Croat HDZ, which calls for splitting power even further to create a Croat entity within Bosnia.

The three blocs have dominated government in Bosnia for years, sharing power in an unwieldy system of ethnic quotas created by U.S. peace negotiators in Dayton, Ohio, to end the 1992-95 war.

They are so far apart on policy that limited Western efforts to encourage reform have frequently gone nowhere.

Anger over factory closures, joblessness and endemic corruption triggered an unprecedented spasm of civil unrest in February, fuelling talk of change. But little came of it.

Turnout was 54 percent, but as many as 10 percent of ballots cast were spoiled in protest. Both the SDA and HDZ increased their share of power, while Dodik’s SNSD lost the race for the Serb member of Bosnia’s largely ceremonial tripartite presidency. It held on to power in the country’s autonomous Serb Republic.

All three command huge networks of political patronage through the power of public sector jobs, of which there are many given Bosnia’s highly decentralised system of power.

“I didn’t have much hope that anything would change, but I couldn’t dream that we would backtrack like this; it’s a disaster, Bosnia is going backwards,” said Sarajevan Emira Dusinovic.

It may yet take months for Bosnia’s six layers of government to take shape, more lost time for an economy already hit by devastating floods in May that inflicted damage totaling about 2 billion euros ($2.5 billion).

Some analysts fear a repeat of the February violence if the situation facing ordinary Bosnians does not improve. Observers highlighted the relatively high number of spoiled ballots.

“You can stay away; you can join the half of citizens who did not participate in the vote,” said Tiny Cox of the Council of Europe rights body.

“But if you take the time and trouble to go to the polling station, it also shows they do not have enough trust in the system, and that should be a signal for political parties and politicians.”

Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe official Roberto Battelli said: “The lack of political will to move beyond the Dayton agreement prevents the country from moving away from the current inter-ethnic divides and towards real progress for the country.”